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interesting take, powerclown.
another way of seeing the implications of the article is that the americans are not running the show, really, but instead have become one variable amongst others in a complex and fragile political game. what is curious is that the americans were heavily reliant on kurdish assistance in the context of the invasion, and so appear to be getting played by the group with whom the americans are in fact most closely aligned.
if this is correct, then i end up having to hope that you are more on point on iraq than i am, powerclown, because this is a logic of civil war in the worst possible mode for the americans--as a faction amongst others on the one hand, as a kind of elephant in the chinashop to be manipulated by any and all parties for their own ends on the other. this possibility is why i have been watching the bizarre manoevering of the iraqi regime with concern.
it seems to me that the iraqi police force embodies most of the contradictions of the situation in general. the relation of the american "training" and the factionalized relaity of the force being trained is also a good metaphor for the what i think the american position in all this in fact is.
of course, these are partial--like you say, it is hard to get a view of what is happening behind the carefully framed information circulating from the pentagon into the press pool.
on another level, relative to the american image internationally, i think this kind of development amongst the kurds functions as a powerful immanent critique of the american category "freedom"--dissent, real and possible, armed and discursive, a question of actions or one of belonging to a group that would enable potential action to be imputed to you--all equivalent, all outside the rule of law, all dealt with in what you have to admit are extra-legal means.
the counter would be to argue that this is a state of war. but i thought the war was over. i remember bush saying as much. if that is true, then the argument that would legitimate operating in a wholly extra-legal manner in the name of security should go out the window.
but this entire argument, no matter your position on it, rebounds back onto the bush administration and its particular choices justified in the name of this fictive "war on terror"....
and here the rendition article actually becomes relevant to the discussion.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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